Les Pensees de Lafleur 2021 (750ML)

95 DE / 95 JS / 94 JD / 94 WI / 94 WA / 93 VM / 93 JA / 93 WCI / 93 FS / 16.5+ JR

Smoked earth and iron touches with iris and rose perfume on the nose alongside sweet spices and tobacco. This is an exceptional wine giving sublime enjoyment and appeal. Gentle, soft and delicate yet also juicy and succulent with mouth filling acidity - really lifted and bright. This has enjoyable roundness but no overt heaviness, it’s so refined with concentrated strawberry and red cherry brightness. Still quite taut, more on the subtle side, with a slow dedication and persistent drive. It’s certainly not shouting but carefully showing it's layered complexity, refinement and general deliciousness. Tannins are so fine, barely even noticeable giving a subtle frame and structure. Just before the finish it becomes more round and spherical with the wet stone, the graphite and density appearing on the palate. Like all wines in the Lafleur stable this year, they expand slowly but surely. -Georgina Hindle, Decanter.

Very perfumed with plums, burnt oranges, raspberries and peaches as well as violets, following through to a medium to full body with a firm and layered palate and a gorgeous finish. Polished. 59% merlot and 41% cabernet franc. - James Suckling

Stunning stuff, the 2021 Château Lafleur Les Pensées has the classic Pomerol sexiness and opulence that defines the vintage. Redcurrants, ripe red fruit, spice, chocolate, and a beautiful sense of minerality and earth all define the aromatics, and it's medium-bodied, with round, supple tannins, beautiful purity, and a gorgeous finish. It's the second wine of this estate but as good as just about every Grand Vin out there. - Jeb Dunnuck.

Aromas of raspberries, mulberries, iris and rose petals introduce the 2021 Pensées de Lafleur, a medium to full-bodied, supple and suave wine that's polished, pure and velvety, its sweet core of fruit built around lively acids and ultra-refined tannins, concluding with a long, precise finish. - William Kelley, Wine Advocate

The 2021 Les Pensées de Lafleur is a very pretty wine. Strong floral and spice notes give the Pensées tons of charm. Silky tannins reinforce a feeling of finesse that further adds to its immediacy and appeal. Succulent red cherry fruit, red plum, orange peel, cinnamon and cedar open with time in the glass. Bright acids reappear on the finish to round things out. More than anything else, it is the wine's balance that is most impressive. What a charmer. - Antonio Galloni, Vinous Media

This has weight and volume through the mid palate, with blackberry and cassis fruits as it opens. Less joyous and generous than in recent years, the finish is closer to a classic Lafleur, in that it has clarity, salinity and sinew, and as it builds through the palate you get clear tannins. Great quality, a little atypical but one to look out for. No chaptilisation. Harvest September 28 to October 2. Merlot-dominant on clay-sand-gravel, classic Pomerol terroir. -Jane Anson, Inside Bordeaux.

Roses, truffle, tobacco, plums, licorice, and chocolate appear in the aromatics. On the medium-bodied palate, the wine is supple, bright, and creamy, with fresh, sweet, juicy cherries topped with dark chocolate. It is the elegance, and purity of the fruits on the palate, and in the finish that stands out here. You can enjoy this with pleasure on release, or age it for more secondary notes. The wine blends 59% Merlot with 41% Cabernet Franc. Drink from 2026-2038-Jeff Leve, Wine Cellar Insider, tasted 6/24